TweakHound

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Windows 10 Ultimate Performance Power Mode

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I woke up this morning and a number of sites are all giddy talking about the new Win10 Ultimate Performance Mode.
Windows Blog – Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17101 for Fast & Build 17604 for Skip Ahead

A new power scheme – Ultimate Performance: Demanding workloads on workstations always desire more performance. As part of our effort to provide the absolute maximum performance we’re introducing a new power policy called Ultimate Performance. Windows has developed key areas where performance and efficiency tradeoffs are made in the OS. Over time, we’ve amassed a collection of settings which allow the OS to quickly tune the behavior based on user preference, policy, underlying hardware or workload.
This new policy builds on the current High-Performance policy, and it goes a step further to eliminate micro-latencies associated with fine grained power management techniques. The Ultimate Performance Power plan is selectable either by an OEM on new systems or selectable by a user. To do so, you can go to Control Panel and navigate to Power Options under Hardware and Sound (you can also “run” Powercfg.cpl). Just like other power policies in Windows, the contents of the Ultimate Performance policy can be customized.
The Ultimate Performance Power plan is selectable either by an OEM on new systems or selectable by a user. To do so, you can go to Control Panel and navigate to Power Options under Hardware and Sound (you can also “run” Powercfg.cpl).
As the power scheme is geared towards reducing micro-latencies it may directly impact hardware; and consume more power than the default balanced plan. The Ultimate Performance power policy is currently not available on battery powered systems.
We’ll continue to tune and evaluate the power plan settings. To submit feedback please use the Feedback Hub and file your feedback under Power & Battery > Setting category.

My take. Microsoft is going to fix the High Performance Power Scheme because it was still turning things off even though you told it not to. High Performance is just that. “Ultimate High Performance” is just a marketing ploy.

Patch Tuesday

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I’m not patching. See the previous post: Patch Tuesday, Part 1 as to why.

Windows 10: February 13, 2018—KB4074588 (OS Build 16299.248)

Warning – Windows 7 Users, KB2952664 Is Back
It has been moved to “Important” again. We Geeks don’t like it because it is telemetry related.
KB2952664 – Compatibility update for keeping Windows up-to-date in Windows 7
In Windows Update you can right-click and hide this.
My script to block this and other sneaky updates: https://www.tweakhound.com/2015/11/01/remove-and-block-gwx-in-windows-7-2/

Microsoft Security Update Summary for February 13, 2018
I post this for your info when Microsoft sends it to me.
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Windows Performance Impact Of Meltdown And Spectre

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Microsoft exec Terry Myerson lays out what he expects the performance impact of the Meltdown/Spectre patches.
– With Windows 10 on newer silicon (2016-era PCs with Skylake, Kabylake or newer CPU), benchmarks show single-digit slowdowns, but we don’t expect most users to notice a change because these percentages are reflected in milliseconds.
TH – Skylake released 2015. Kaby Lake 2016.
– With Windows 10 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), some benchmarks show more significant slowdowns, and we expect that some users will notice a decrease in system performance.
TH – Haswell released 2013.
– With Windows 8 and Windows 7 on older silicon (2015-era PCs with Haswell or older CPU), we expect most users to notice a decrease in system performance.
TH – Haswell released 2013
– Windows Server on any silicon, especially in any IO-intensive application, shows a more significant performance impact when you enable the mitigations to isolate untrusted code within a Windows Server instance. This is why you want to be careful to evaluate the risk of untrusted code for each Windows Server instance, and balance the security versus performance tradeoff for your environment.
TH – You’re attached to another object by an incline plane wrapped helically around an axis.

Conveniently left out is any reference to Microsoft bricking AMD machines.
I will repeat my advice to not update Windows machines right now. Certainly you need to have a full image backup before you do.
I recommend Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition.

To find your CPU family.
Those odd names are CPU Family or CPU Code Names (Haswell, Skylake, Kabylake…).
Download Speccy PORTABLE and run it.
Click the CPU tab. Find the line Code Name, that is your CPU family.
Google it or, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_microprocessors

WARNING – Do Not Run Windows Update

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Patches will be rolling out today for the Intel CPU Fiasco.
(See below for the email I woke up to this morning.)
I highly recommend you pause, disable, stop, do not run Windows Update.
Full details have not been released as of this writing. These updates will at the kernel level. For the non-Geek that means at the core of Windows. I am not trying to play chicken little (henny penny for my U.K. friends). IMHO these updates are being rushed out and will be altered over time. They could slow down or even hose your PC. Let someone else beta test this stuff.
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My Home Server – Windows 7

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Here is my current setup. I will be attempting to switch over to a Linux server setup in the near future (just because).
This machine was my secondary workstation and has been repurposed for my home server.
This is a quickie article. No hand holding. If you do not know your way around Windows this article is not for you.
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